I wonder, whether even within the discursive boundary of science, it can be proved that humans have an innate drive to imagine (I am not assuming the imagination-realistic perception binary) beyond the everyday, sensuous, empirical reality. Even animistic religions (or animistic components in polytheistic, monotheistic, or other religions) that attribute supernatural characteristics to natural objects do that by interjecting an element of super-naturality in the domain of nature. That transcendental drive, if we can call it, may not be limited to religion as we understand it, but also in other versions of political, ethical utopias, including, I dare say, Marxism. Contra Engels, not assuming a scientific-utopian binary either.
If we can establish some kind of a workable explanation of religion as biologically rooted, then can't we argue that those of us, who like Doug, has shed religion have actually shifted that drive to other realms of life. such as politics, ethics, love or whatever. No?
> --- Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > Well, we don't really know that religion is purely
> a
> > social construction. It could be biological, a
> > social
> > construction, even (gasp) true, some combination
> of
> > the three, or something else.
> >
> > That religion broadly defined is a human
> > near-universal, like language, suggests it is not
> > merely a contingent social construction.
> >
>
>
>
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